Cultivating Respect: Safe Schools for All

For the 9 out of 10 LGBTQ students who experience some form of mistreatment in school, education can be a frightening experience. It’s incumbent upon parents, families, friends, and allies to make schools safer for ALL students. PFLAG chapters work directly with schools and stakeholders in their communities, providing support, resources, training, creative programs, and even model policy to create an environment of respect. Our umbrella program to support their efforts, work with our national partners and raise visibility of the issues facing LGBTQ youth in learning environments is our Cultivating Respect: Safe Schools for All program, with its supporting publication. Our advocacy work at the federal, state and local levels are an integral part as well. All of this work is designed to reinforce and support the work done by our local chapters to ensure that we all create and support learning environments that help all students find educational success.

PFLAGers have spent decades on the front lines, fighting innumerable instances of bullying, harassment, and discrimination in our nation’s schools and communities.

In addition to transgender youth, gender expansive (also called gender nonconforming or nonbinary) youth are receiving a great deal of attention in the media and among educators and policymakers. However,...